Eliot Porter
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FRAMING IDEAS Landscape and Place Images from the collection of the MoCP for classroom use. This image set corresponds with a curriculum guide that can be found at http://www.mocp.org/education/resources-for- educators.php These resources were created with special support from the Terra Foundation for American Art. Ansel Adams Bridalveil Fall, Yosemite National Park, California, n.d. Ansel Adams Gunlock, Washington County, Utah, 1953 Ansel Adams El Capitan, Yosemite National Park, California, 1956 Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) Ansel Adams’s documentation of the western landscape has taken on iconic significance as one of the defining purist visions of both the American West and of the photographic medium. Images such as this one, taken within the National Park System, have frequently been used to promote tourism and preservation of the landscapes they portray. El Capitan is a subject Adams photographed repeatedly, using the mountain’s towering presence to signify the sublime and unfathomable vastness of nature. Compositionally, Adams tends to frame these monuments of nature so that their iconic character is evoked, and to this aim, he avoids including the tourists and signs of habitation that surround the sites. Born in San Francisco in 1902, Adams began working as an official photographer for the Sierra Club in 1928. In 1932 he and other California-based photographers, including Edward Weston, founded the group f64, which maintained an interest in the technically perfect photographic print. The name f64 is a reference to the smallest standardized aperture setting on the camera’s lens; photographs taken on this setting have the greatest depth of field meaning that nearly every object in the picture plane is in perfect focus. Adams developed a means of explaining exposure and development control known as the “zone system,” publishing his first book on how to master photographic technique in 1935. Over the next several years, Adams published a number of books and articles detailing his photographic approach; his titles include The Camera and the Lens (1948), The Negative (1948), The Print (1950), Natural Light Photography (1952), and Artificial Light Photography (1956). In the 1930s, Adams printed the photographs of Dorothea Lange, with whom he would collaborate with on several assignments including a study of the wartime shipyards in Richmond, California (1945), a report for Life on the Mormons in Utah, and a project on agriculture in the San Joaquin valley for Fortune (both published in the 1950s). His photographs of Yosemite Valley – a lifelong inspiration to Adams – and other subjects have been frequently reproduced, published as portfolios, and exhibited internationally. Adams was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was critical in the founding of The Friends of Photography, the Ansel Adams Center for Photography, San Francisco, which existed from 1967 to 2001. In 2002, John Szarkowski organized a traveling exhibition of Adams’s work commemorating the 100th Anniversary of his birth. In 1985, a year after Adams’s death, an 11,760 foot mountain in Yosemite National Park was named Mt. Ansel Adams. -- ed. Ashley Siple Eliot Porter Spruce Trees and River, Colorado, from the portfolio The Seasons, 1959, portfolio 1964 Eliot Porter Maple Blossoms In A Woodland Pool, New Hampshire, From "Portfolio One: The Seasons Sierra Club, San Francisco" Portfolio, May 1961, portfolio 1964 Eliot Porter (American, 1901-1990) Until he saw the photographs of Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter was a scientist and teacher. Influenced by Adams and Alfred Stieglitz, Porter decided to devote himself to photography and eventually became one of the best-known documenters of the unspoiled outdoor world and its creatures, especially birds. Spruce Trees and River, Colorado attests to Porter’s profound interest in – and mastery of – the exquisite color and patterns found in the natural world. In 1979 the work of Eliot Porter was exhibited in Intimate Landscapes, the first one-person show of color photography at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. This exhibition earned Porter praise as the individual who brought credibility to color photography as a medium of fine art. Porter developed new technical methods of photographing animals, birds, and insects. He was a scientist as well as an artist: he graduated from Harvard’s School of Engineering in 1924, and from Harvard Medical School in 1929. Born in 1901 in Winnetka, Illinois, Porter died in 1990. Robert Adams Expressway near Colton, California, 1982 Robert Adams South From the Rocky Flats, Jefferson County, Colorado, 1977, printed 1989 Robert Adams Clear-Cut and Burned, East of Arch Cape, Oregon, 1976, printed 1982 Robert Adams Sunday School, A Church in a New Tract, Colorado Springs, 1970, printed 1985 Robert Adams (American, b. 1937) Robert Adams’s photographs offer views of natural landscapes transformed by their intersection with civilization. Adams was one of many photographers to challenge the romanticized view of landscape photography dominant in the first half of the 20th century, and his work is as much concerned with the modern post-war landscape as it is with beauty and form. His work was included in an exhibition titled, New Topographics: Photographs of Man-Altered Landscape curated by William Jenkins for the International Museum of Photography, Rochester, New York in 1975. The exhibition ushered in the new era of landscape photography and it showcased the ideals of the new approach: landscape could not be artificially separated from cultural and social counterparts, and landscape photography had to abandon the hollow sense of style it had inherited from the previous half century. The exhibit was a milestone for a new generation of landscape photographers and it drew attention to the novel idea of a social landscape. Calm and Somber, Adams’ images are an aesthetic articulation of a concern regarding man’s shifting conception of place and environment. Like most of his photographs, Expressway near Colton, California shows discreet traces of man’s presence, which illustrates the new all-inclusive approach to landscape photography. Adams’s art is devoted to the belief that all land, no matter what has been done to it, retains an enduring significance best expressed through a straightforward approach. Born in Orange, New Jersey in 1937, Robert Adams has spent much of his life photographing the developed American West. A writer as well as an artist, he earned a BA in English from the University of Redlands, California and a PhD in English from the University of Southern California. Adams has published a number of books featuring his writing and photographs, including West from the Columbia: Views at the River Mouth (1995), Listening to the River: Seasons in the American West (1994), To Make it Home: Photographs of the American West (1989), and Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values (1981). His work has been widely exhibited, including in a major retrospective exhibition at The Philadelphia Museum of Art (1989). Adams is also the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Photographer’s Fellowships, two John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowships, and the Peer Award of The Friends of Photography. -- edited by Ashley Siple Adams, Robert. White Churches of the Plains; Examples from Colorado. [Boulder] Colorado: Colorado Associated University Press, 1970. Adams, Robert. The New West: Landscapes along the Colorado Front Range. [Boulder] Colorado: Colorado Associated University Press, 1974. William Christenberry Kudzu and House, Tuscaloosa County, AL, 1988 William Christenberry Kudzu and House, Tuscaloosa County, AL, 1991 William Christenberry Site of Kudzu and House, Tuscaloosa County, AL (view II), 1992 William Christenberry (American, b. 1936) With the encouragement of noted photographer Walker Evans, William Christenberry began to pursue photography seriously and focus on the landscape of Hale County, Alabama, which he has photographed for more than twenty-five years. Christenberry is devoted to the heritage of the South and, using his training as a sculptor and painter, interprets it in a range of media. This series focusing on a small shack, Kudzu and House, Tuscaloosa County, AL, is a meditation on the passage of time, the ebb and flow of seasons, and the spirit of rural Southern life. William Christenberry was born in Alabama in 1936. He received his BFA and MA degrees in painting from the University of Alabama and is currently a professor of art at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC. Christenberry’s work has received honors and awards, and has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Southall, Thomas, Walker Evans, and William Christenberry. Of Time & Place: Walker Evans and William Christenberry. San Francisco: Friends of Photography, 1990. Stack, Trudy Wilner, William Christenberry, and Allen Tullos. Christenberry Reconstruction: The Art of William Christenberry. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1996. Belcher, Max, Beverly Buchanan, et al. House and Home: Spirits of the South. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994. Terry Evans Indian Sand Dunes, April 2001, 2001 Terry Evans Konza Prairie, near Manhattan, Kansas, October 1982, 1982, printed 2000 Terry Evans Montana, Great Falls vicinity,(striped fields), September 28, 1999, 1999 Terry Evans (United States, b. 1944) For a large portion of her career, Terry Evans has photographed the prairie, from its natural, untouched